You don't get many days like this. The first image of an exoplanet around a Sun-like star has been released. Previously we had only visually detected a 5 mass Jupiter exoplanet around a brown dwarf star. Brown dwarf stars are too small to undergo any nuclear fusion, and as such they just dimly glow from their original formation. This makes planets far easier to detect around them as they put out millions of times less light, which normally hides any planets. This however is a proper star.

Yup that tiny little dot is a planet estimated to be around the same mass as Jupiter.

The planet Fomalhaut b orbits Fomalhaut (aka Alpha Piscis Austrini) once every 872 years, it is pretty far out. The star itself is not easily visible from the UK, it hugs the horizon even at this time of year when its at its highest point.

In this image the star is blocked out (artificially eclipsed if you will), and the remaining starlight is then subtracted from the image by using a template of another star. The dust ring around it is actually real, as is the planet, the lines radiating from the central star are artifacts.

And that's not all, we've also got the first image of multiple planets orbiting the star HR 8799, this time taken in infrared, which reduces the contrast differences between the star and the planet. Again the light from the star had to be blocked out. This system is only about 60 million years old which worked in our favour for detecting these planets as they're still warm from their original formation and as such release much more infrared light than normal.

I've been doing a bit of tidying up late this afternoon, and a bit of optimizing to a lot of the stuff on the server (I halved the size of the database running these blogs wooo), moved a bunch of old websites around a bit and put them into read only mode (aka I'm never going to touch them again mode). Anyway since I was digging around there I thought I'd check out and see what the most popular entries on this blog are, for some reason it's not exposed via the interface anywhere.

The most viewed entry is: The Earth is older than 6000 years with 49,170 views.
2nd: Holy Combat with 44,094 views.
3rd: d3dx9.dll is missing or not found or installed with 43,352 views.
4th: Hamad Darwish's Windows Vista wallpapers released with 25,336 views.
5th: Windows Vista DRM nonsense with 18,630 views.
6th: Command & Conquer 3 problems with standard user with 13.626 views.
7th: Apple iTunes copying Microsoft again with 13,380 views.
8th: Why the iPod sucks with 9,439 views.
9th: Configuring AVG Free 8 anti-virus for the best experience with 8,957 views.
10th DreamScene Preview now on Ultimate Extras with 8,890 views.

The Times reported yesterday that Margaret Beckett is considering proposals similar to what the Chartered Institute of Housing came up with last month. I hope her considerations involved quickly moving the proposals from her desk to the bin.

Booting people out of their homes because their "circumstances have improved", be they a slightly better paying job or their kids moving out is unacceptable, and so is offering them friendly advice on cheap home ownership or private renting with a wink and nudge, and then threatening them with higher rents or booting them out which is what these proposals basically call for.

If there's a shortage of family sized homes you don't tackle it by threatening to kick people out, you offer them financial incentives to move to a smaller house and give them 5 or 10 years to take advantage of it so they're not pressured straight away and can think it over in their own time.

If Beckett has just realised there's a shortage perhaps she and her predecessor should of been making plans to build more houses, something the left have been saying for years. With the construction industry facing shortages of work due to the private sector grinding to a halt there is no better time to organise a large scale building project.

Update: Margaret Beckett on Question Time denied these reports completely.

So here's a review of the HTC Touch HD, no I don't have one but the first are trickling into the UK:

Two points I have to make:

1) You can slide your finger along the buttom to quickly move through the different options, not just going one at a time like demonstrated here.

2) It doesn't come with Opera Mini (the freeware browser for low-end phones) like mentioned, it comes with Opera Mobile the high-end browser which normally you have to pay for.

Not everything is going well on the political scene in the United States, three states, Florida, Arizona and California banned gay marriage, this brings the total number of states to 40, although some still allow civil partnerships.

From the NYT:

"It was a great victory," said the Rev. James Garlow, senior pastor of Skyline Church in San Diego County and a leader of the campaign to pass the California measure, Proposition 8. “We saw the people just rise up."

Unfortunately issues like this just don't seem to want to die in the United States, both this and abortion (although I'd like to believe the worst of that is past us) seems to be caught in an endless cycle, the fundies just never giving up and then striking while everyone else is distracted. This move also leaves in doubt the legal status of thousands who took advantage of the ruling by the Californian state court which declared same sex marriages to be legal earlier in the year. In Arizona a similar ban was defeated a couple of years back.

Hopefully with all the people who voted for the first time this week the power of the Christian fundamentalists can start to be worn down over the coming years, not only in the United States, but also here where they represent an increasingly dangerous threat to modern progressive values and education.

The 5th Security Intelligence Report has been released this covers January to June 2008. The full report can be downloaded here. Here's a quick look at it:

First up we see the percentage of browser exploits on Windows XP vs Windows Vista. We can see on Windows Vista only 5.7% of the exploits are targeting Microsoft code, while on Windows XP that figure is 42.3%.

A break down of the security vulnerabilities on Windows XP looks like this, a mix of Microsoft and 3rd party vulnerabilities.

On Windows Vista however none of the top 10 vulnerabilities being exploited effect Microsoft code. We see a make up of RealPlayer, Apple's QuickTime and several browser toolbars and plugins instead being responsible for the exploits.

Lastly we see the infection numbers for Windows XP and Windows Vista. The most secure client version of Windows being Windows Vista SP1 x64, followed closely behind by the 32-bit client.

What can we draw from this? If you want to keep your system secure 1) Use Windows Vista 2) Don't install any Apple software, RealPlayer, or any dodgy toolbars or plugins on your computer.